


Grad School is Where We Hide From Our Demons

by icarusforgotten



Series: Spideypool Week 2015 [1]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, spideypool - Fandom
Genre: AU, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Slow Burn, grad school, grad students, scientist!Peter, scientist!Wade, spideypool week, spideypool week day 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 23:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4724315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusforgotten/pseuds/icarusforgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since Peter's uncle died, he's been apathetic to most things around him. His focus lays solely with his research, the only thing that can distract him effectively enough from his grief. Until he meets Wade, that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grad School is Where We Hide From Our Demons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CAPSING](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CAPSING/gifts).



> for day 1 of spideypool week

The first day of the school year was always somewhat hectic, but it seemed to be much more so for the freshman grad students. At least, for some of them.

Others, of the loud and obnoxious variety, paraded the campus grounds with thrilling and undoubtedly false tales of how their undergrad research lined up with the likes of Nobel Prize winners.

Peter remembered his first day of grad school.

It was uneventful, save for being sick throughout the main “freshman breaking” events.

Luckily, his school didn’t pride themselves too much on humiliating their new students. Well, maybe just a bit. But Peter didn’t feel that his initiation was any worse than his undergrad. And it most definitely did not compare to the entirety of his high school career.

Peter had to run up and down the campus halls wearing silly hats and comical glasses, searching for hidden clues that lead him from one station to the next. That alone was a cumbersome task, but the fact that he was sporting a fever made it infinitely worse. The new students were split into teams of four, and with the lot that had arrived for grad orientation, that left him competing against nine other teams. It was someone’s great idea to have the new  _graduate_  students perform “fun” tasks involving cracking riddles and running around the campus halls for each subsequent clue. The goal of the tasks were to better familiarise the students with the campus, but Peter felt a simple map and coordinates would do the trick.

Really, there was no need for childish games.

And he thought the other students would feel the same way, but most had enjoyed themselves.

Perhaps if less were going on in his life, and the death of his uncle wouldn’t have been so fresh, Peter could have enjoyed himself as well.

Clearing his thoughts, Peter brought his attention back to the new set of freshmen at hand.

His attention was immediately whisked by the arrogant ones.

Kids who thought they were hot-shots because they worked in cancer labs in their undergrads, or because their fathers were sitting on research chairs. They thought grad school would be a walk in the park.

So did Peter, though. He frowned, recalling his own naivety.

It had been a year already. A whole year. And he felt as though he’d gotten nowhere with his research.

A common notion, he was later told.

Most students had to change their projects within a year, anyway. It was rare for a student to find success in assigned research right from the get-go.

So it infuriated Peter to no end to have these brash and abrasive new students cluttering up the halls with their egos. One of them even went as far as to claim familial relations with Maria Curie. As if.

Peter tried to push his way through the throng of new students to reach the incubator. He was handling the final stages of one very crucial experiment, and was in the process of putting his agar tubes away. Why the student council felt the need to initiate new students right outside the research labs was a mystery to Peter.

He struggled through the crowd, maintaining his balance as best he could despite the numerous elbows jabbing into his side, trying his very best not to trip over the endless array of feet before him. For the umpteenth time that day, Peter thought about retiring early and just scurrying beneath the covers. Orientations always brought him stress, though usually he was most concerned with his own. But this – this crowd of egocentric wannabe-scientists took the cake for inciting great amounts of anxiety within Peter.

And if pushing through the densest region of the crowd was not enough of a test to his patience, Peter was met with his next obstacle.

Standing in front of the incubator was a burly guy, looking almost too old to be a student. Though, at this level of the game, no one was too old to be a student. He’d seen single moms in their forty’s starting on their PhDs.

“Umm …excuse me … ”

The guy shot Peter a hesitant glance, eyes lingering for a few seconds too long. He grunted, sliding his frame over, and leaned his weight against the wall. He didn’t interact with the other students.

Peter quickly put the tubes into the incubator. He was about to walk back to his lab, but there was something about that guy that drew him in, that made him pivot his stance and face the new student.

And Peter didn’t know  _how_  he missed it before, but the guy’s face was absolutely  _covered_  in scars. What could have happened to him? There were fires throughout New York almost all the time, but still. This looked … .intimately worse.

“Is there a problem?”

Peter didn’t realise he’d been openly staring at the new guy. Quickly, he averted his eyes, mumbling a stiff apology.

The guy simply grunted in response.

Before he could say anything else, the group leader beckoned the students away, and the new guy followed them, though reluctantly. He trailed at the fringes of the crowd, head tucked low between his shoulders, gaze cast downwards. Peter saw him shove his hands deep into his pockets before he disappeared behind the corner.

Since his uncle died, Peter was overwhelmingly apathetic to the variety of sadness life brought his way.

But now – now there was a certain heaviness sitting in the depths of his chest, an urge to reach out and  _touch_  the sadness of another. For months Peter had been lingering in vague limbo, unfeeling and unapprehensive. Focusing solely on his research, the only thing to help get his mind off of – he shuddered, recollecting the memory.

Peter felt intrigued by this stranger.

Rather than feel guilty for practically feeding off someone else’s misery, he welcomed it greedily.


End file.
